CHICAGO (CN) — "Parents can't afford to pay. Workers can't afford to stay."
So begins a pair of white paper studies recently released by the Illinois Child Care for All Coalition, a child care reform advocacy group led by the Service Employees International Union.
The studies, released in May and October, paint a grim picture of the current state of Illinois' child care sector, finding parents face dwindling options and soaring prices for early child care services in the state while many workers in the industry live in poverty. It's a trend, the studies conclude, that will not change without significant state intervention.
"The overall failure of the system results in a depleted child care capacity, insufficient to serve all families in need," the first of the pair of studies states. "Navigating this situation leaves both parents and workers economically depleted and in a constant state of anxiety."
As the studies' tagline implies, the crisis is twofold: On the supply side of the equation, child care workers, particularly those working in independent or in-home daycares, are chronically underpaid and overworked. According to the studies, licensed family child care providers in Illinois only made an average of $7.04 per hour in 2019, with license-exempt providers making even less. College-educated early child care teachers fared only slightly better, making an average of $13 per hour in 2019.
"The result is that nearly 20% of early educators in Illinois live in poverty," the first paper states.
The paper also says that in recent years many Illinois child care workers have begun leaving the industry in response to the bleak situation, seeking better jobs elsewhere.
"Following the pandemic, over 80% of early childhood teachers responding to a survey by the National Association for the Education of Young Children noted a staffing shortage at work," the studies report.
On the demand side, this mass exodus of child care workers has slashed the availability of child care services, particularly pre-K services, for parents. It's also sent prices soaring, with struggling daycare centers charging more per child to keep themselves afloat. One figure from the second study, citing research by the non-partisan Illinois Economic Policy Institute, concluded that a two-parent, two-child family in Chicago would need to pull in over $92,000 per year to comfortably afford child care services.
"In Illinois, the annual cost of center care for an infant is $13,000, while in Chicago the average annual cost of care is close to $19,000," the paper states. "A family with more than one young child in need of child care could easily spend between $20,000 - $50,000 per year."
Illinois does have one avenue of subsidized childcare assistance: the Child Care Assistance Program, which caps child care costs at 7% of family income for those who qualify. However, the papers conclude that this one program is insufficient to meet the needs of the moment. In order to qualify, applicants need to make at or below 225% of the federal poverty level - $53,000 for a family of four as of 2022. Many child care providers also do not accept CCAP vouchers.
Even those that do often still partially rely on private tuition to fund themselves, explained Pedro Bortoto, an SEIU researcher and one of the studies' authors.
"Licensed home providers can charge tuition from parents that do not qualify for CCAP. Most home-based centers operate having as revenue a mix of public funding and private pay," Bortoto said. "For child care centers, the same logic applies, but it usually depends on the fiscal status of the center... there's a sea of centers that rely on both public and private pay."
The studies lay the blame for the crisis on a lack of state funding for child care providers, as well as a lack of adequate taxes on the wealthy in order to secure that funding. Illinois dedicates about $2 billion annually to supporting child care. The studies – in addition to the Illinois Commission on Equitable Early Childhood Education and Care Funding, established by Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker in 2019 – say the sector needs more than six times that amount of investment.